


This is Your Country; This is Your Home

by ThisDominionIsMine



Series: The Here and Now [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Road Trips, gummy worms, irrational excuses to touch faces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 09:49:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisDominionIsMine/pseuds/ThisDominionIsMine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hook cocks his head to the side and arches one eyebrow while he grins at her. “I’m a man of many talents, love.” His hair is pointing in about ten different directions, black merging into the black of his coat, his shirt, his boots; black like mold spores on the white shower wall of the day. Black like the face of a compass in a strange city, pointing the way home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is Your Country; This is Your Home

She sees Hook coming from all the way across the parking lot. He’s faking carefreeness as he exits the rest stop complex, all saunter and swagger; the swirl of his coat cuts him out: he’s a black mark against the billow of brightly-colored tourists and road-trippers filling the lot. Henry is at his hip, another smear of color, hand already buried in a package of sour gummy worms. Emma fits the fuel nozzle into the tank and presses the metal trigger forward into its notch so she doesn’t have to hold it in place and watches Henry split off from Hook to bound a direct path over to the Bug.

“They have a sandwich bar,” he says. “Want anything?”

“Uh, just a ham and Swiss, or the closest thing. Here.” She digs out her wallet and peels off a ten and twenty. “Get something besides more gummy worms for yourself.”

Henry’s grin is fit to dazzle. “Yes, ma’am.” He skips away – literally skips. Emma has never seen any other twelve-year-old boy skip. Maybe he gets it from Neal.

There’s a crinkle of plastic as a bag of trail mix slings itself over her left shoulder, speared on the curve of a large metal hook.

“You wore that into the store? Nice.” She turns one hundred and eighty degrees on the spot, rolling Hook’s arm over to her right shoulder, trail mix rustling in its bag.

Hook cocks his head to the side and arches one eyebrow while he grins at her. “I’m a man of many talents, love.” His hair is pointing in about ten different directions, black merging into the black of his coat, his shirt, his boots; black like mold spores on the white shower wall of the day. Black like the face of a compass in a strange city, pointing the way home.

Emma puts one hand in his hair and one on his hip and pulls him in without letting herself think. He moves with her immediately, hand finding her shoulder, her neck, thumbing at the corner of her jaw when she tightens her grip to fit them together better. He’s an immense coil of black heat under the white-hot sun; good, safe black; a color she trusts, clutches tighter, a sort of inevitable landing. Disassociated from this realm: a dragon soaring over New York City; a dragon who followed her to bring her home.

_Clunk_. The trigger snaps out of its notch.

Emma drops her hands; Hook pulls his away. When she opens her eyes, he’s studying her, expression that of a man in the process of being flayed alive. She ducks out from under his arm and wrestles the nozzle back into its holder, then fumbles the gas cap four times before she manages to screw it on properly.

Hook clears his throat as she’s stuffing the receipt into her wallet. “Another one-time thing?”

She looks at where he’s standing with his hands at his sides, shoulders low and open, trail mix still hanging off his hook. Henry is trotting towards them from the edge of her peripheral vision.

Emma jams her wallet into her pocket and steps into Hook’s space again. She reaches down past his stump, slides the trail mix off his hook to hold it in both hands. “Nah, _mate_.”

Hook’s breath hitches and he tilts his head. “That’s a promising statement.”

Emma smiles. “Think you can handle it?”

“If you can, aye.” Hook’s grin slices wide across his face.

“I got the sandwiches,” Henry says from across the car. He looks entirely too amused to have seen nothing. “Or should I go find something else to do?”

“No,” Emma says. “We need to get on the road.” She takes one step back from Hook. Her knuckles brush his elbow when they turn apart, and she circles around the front of the Bug with her heart doing jumping jacks in her chest. Settling in behind the wheel, she drops the trail mix into the space in front of the gearshift and turns her head away to buckle her seat belt.

 There’s a crackling snap, and when she looks back Hook has the bag open and is holding it out to her, smirking.

“Thanks.” She grabs a handful and downs it in one go, then turns the key in the ignition and sets them rolling out of the parking lot as soon as Henry buckles himself in. “This doesn’t mean you can put your feet on the dash.”

Hook winks at her, one knee already up, half-braced. “Wouldn’t dream of it, love.”

She whacks his shoulder, and he huffs a laugh, dropping the foot. The trail mix gets balanced in the crook of his arm as he digs his hand into it.

“Can I have some? I’ll trade you gummy worms,” pipes Henry from the back seat.

Hook passes the trail mix over the back of his seat and takes the gummy worms, again offering them to Emma first. She takes a few, chewing them and watching out of the corner of her eye while Hook examines one before popping it into his mouth. His face goes completely blank for a few seconds, and then he murmurs a soft “Interesting.”

“Good interesting or bad interesting?”

Hook hums to himself, then eats another worm. “Good interesting.”

Emma snorts and shakes her head as she spins the wheel to point them towards the highway. “That’s progress.”

“That it is,” he agrees, and bites down on another.


End file.
